July 2023
13Jul

ESG Remains Important for Pension Funds and Asset Owners

Asset owners face the thorniest investment challenges today, dealing with inflation, geopolitical instability, and systemic risks like climate change. They oversee some of the world’s largest pools of capital, steering investment policy on behalf of pension plans, foundations, endowments, and sovereign wealth funds. Their practices shape the capital markets and the behavior of asset managers, financial advisors, and retail investors. They invest with a long time horizon and are exposed to the entire global market. That means they can’t diversify...

July 13, 2023
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12Jul

Britain’s £50 billion pensions gamble provides ‘no guarantees’ for savers

Britain’s financial services industry has broadly cheered fresh government proposals to jump-start the economy by channelling £50 billion (US$64.5 billion) of pension fund cash into fledgling firms, but the plans could backfire on savers, experts said. Finance minister Jeremy Hunt on Monday unveiled a raft of reforms aimed at redirecting a greater proportion of a £4.6 trillion pool of capital managed by Britain’s pensions and insurance sectors into unloved UK assets by 2030. The so-called Mansion House Reforms follow years of...

July 12, 2023
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11Jul

UK. Workplace pensions to invest billions in unlisted stocks

The government will continue its intervention in the allocation of the UK's trillions of pounds of pension holdings, after Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt announced that nine of the largest defined contribution (DC) pension schemes had agreed to allocate at least 5 per cent of their default funds to unlisted companies by 2030. Aviva (AV.), Scottish Widows, Legal & General (LGEN), Aegon, Phoenix (PHNX), Nest, Smart Pension, M&G (MNG) and Mercers have signed the Mansion House Compact, Hunt said,...

July 11, 2023
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11Jul

South Korea’s $1 trillion pension fund under new pressure by climate groups over coal

South Korea’s National Pension Service (NPS) is being challenged by climate groups demanding for the retirement fund, one of the world’s largest, to disclose details of discussions over limiting investments in coal. Three activist groups jointly filed a case on Tuesday at the Seoul Administrative Court accusing the welfare ministry, which oversees the fund, of refusing to release minutes of meetings at which coal divestment policies were discussed, the campaigners said in a statement. NPS declined to comment on the...

July 11, 2023
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10Jul

UK. Pension companies to announce 5% commitment to growth assets

The move comes ahead of chancellor Jeremy Hunt's Mansion House speech tonight (10 July) which is due to set out a series of reforms intended to channel tens of billions of pounds of Britain's pensions savings into high-growth companies. The Financial Times said the chancellor would note voluntary move by some of the UK's biggest pension providers - firms it says include Aviva, Legal & General, Phoenix and Scottish Widows. It added two-thirds of the defined contribution (DC) pensions market...

July 10, 2023
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06Jul

US. Chicago’s pension crisis worsens with investment losses

It’s a good thing Mayor Brandon Johnson established his own “working group” to find long-term solutions to Chicago’s pension crisis. The mountain is getting steeper to climb. Chicago’s unfunded pension liability rose by 5.4% in 2022 — from $33.6 billion to $35.4 billion — after stock market losses suffered by the four city employee pension funds. The Firefighters Pension Fund hovers closest to bankruptcy, with assets to cover just 18.8% of liabilities. That’s followed by Municipal Employees (20.7%), Police (21.5%) and...

July 6, 2023
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05Jul

UK. Another nail in the coffin for private sector pension capitalism?

Without too much fanfare, the ONS dropped its latest Financial Survey of Pension Schemes data, covering the aftermath of LDI-mageddon. As well as putting data to things we already suspected (eg that private defined benefit schemes (DB) dumped corporate bonds to fund collateral calls), one unheralded development stuck out. Private sector defined benefit schemes have been shedding their equity holdings at a fairly rapid clip for reasons we’ve discussed many times. This trend continued in the fourth quarter of 2022, and...

July 5, 2023
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04Jul

California Quietly Shelves $15 Billion Pension Divestment Bill

The California State Assembly has shelved legislation that would have forced the country’s two largest pension funds to divest an estimated $15 billion from oil and gas companies, a major blow to environmental advocates who hoped the funds could be a national model for the divestment movement. SB-252, which passed the state Senate in May, won’t be given a floor vote, according to the bill’s lead author, Senator Lena Gonzalez of Los Angeles County. The legislation has been converted to...

July 4, 2023
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03Jul

U.S. pension funds, universities face pressure over China investments

U.S. public pension plans and universities are facing pressure to divest their portfolios from China amid tensions between Washington and Beijing, with billions of dollars at stake. Proposed federal and state legislation takes aim at public money being used toward investment into China over fears about national security and whether American dollars should go to a country the U.S. has deemed its primary strategic competitor. In May, a group of U.S. Senators led by Republican Marco Rubio reintroduced legislation which would ban the...

July 3, 2023
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June 2023
30Jun

The State of Longevity 2021

By Daragh Campbell  2021 demonstrated that research into antiaging therapies is going from strength-to-strength, and our review of longevity clinical trials shows this clearly. As different areas of research continue to gain traction (cellular reprogramming, in particular), we wanted to analyse exactly how the longevity clinical trial market performed last year. In order to assess clinical trial data across 2021, we interrogated the Longevity.Technology database, which consists of over 250 longevity companies (and growing all the time!). This was used to...

June 30, 2023
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